THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



151 



The provision of the two essentials, water and 

 transportation, the lack of which had stifled the fu- 

 ture of the section within the narrowest possible lim- 

 itations, was all that was needed to make the future 

 of southwest Texas as attractive and roseate as it had 

 been unattractive and tenebrious in the past. 



The foregoing has been presented with a view of 

 emphasizing the reason why the territory adjacent +o 

 the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway offers such 

 advantages and inducements today as contrasted with 

 its former uninviting status. 



The discovery of artesian water, augmented by 

 the unexcelled opportunities for river irrigation, which 

 made it possible to utilize the fertile soil and equable 

 climate for crop production, metamorphosed southwest 

 Texas from a cattle country into an agricultural and 

 horticultural section of indescribable merit. 



way in the Rio Grande Valley seventy-five miles above 

 Brownsville and one hundred miles from the coast. No 

 other locality abutting the Gulf of Mexico possesses the 

 same unusual recommendation of uncommon or rather 

 extraordinary elevation as southwest Texas. 



Bluffs of considerable altitude rise abruptly at the 

 water's edge, and form the abutment of a vast table 

 land, which extends inland with a gradual and im- 

 perceptible increasing elevation of approximately one 

 foot to the mile for more than one hundred miles. 

 The point of highest elevation is at Fordyce, the ter- 

 minus of the Hidalgo Branch of the Rio Grande Valley, 

 where the foothills that follow down the course of 

 the river from the west, lose themselves in the table 

 land. From this point the elevation falls in two direc- 

 tions toward the southwest, following the river, and 

 toward the gulf in an easterly and northeasterly direc- 



'^^^^^^^^i^^^^^^^^HB^^Hi 



Onion Packing House in the Lower Valley of the Rio Grande, tributary to the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico RaUway. 



The provision of railroad facilities has left no 

 problem unsolved. 



In no other section of the United States today is 

 there to be found a soil of such marvelous richness 

 and fertility, and a climate or such equable and evenly 

 balanced characteristics as exist in the gulf coast coun- 

 try of southwest Texas. Add to this combination a 

 system of controlled moisture which the irrigation pos- 

 sibilities of the section guarantee, and you have the 

 most self-sufficient, certain and enduring agricultural 

 proposition conceivable. 



Topographically speaking, southwest Texas, trav- 

 ersed by the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway, 

 is for the most part level, with occasional breaks, which 

 give ample asurance of good drainage. The elevation 

 varies from about thirty feet at the coast to over one 

 hundred at the most inland point reached by the Hidal- 

 go branch of the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Rail- 



tion toward the Nueces River. In substantiation of 

 this fact it is both peculiar and noteworthy that for 

 over one hundred miles northward from its mouth, 

 the Rio Grande can not boast the possession of a single 

 tributary on the Texas side. 



The lay of the land is such that the entire drain- 

 age of the section is east and northeast toward the 

 gulf. A number of "arroyas," "hollows," more com- 

 monly known as ravines, jut back from the coast and 

 constitute a magnificent natural drainage system, which 

 entirely relieves the section from swamps and marshes, 

 which are frequently detrimental to health and indus- 

 trial conditions in coastal countries. 



It is extremely doubtful if any other locality of 

 similar dimensions can boast of the variety of soils 

 of southwest Texas. Almost any character of soil rec- 

 ognized as conducive to the production of particular 

 crops can be found somewhere in the section. The ter- 



